


the fabric of your flesh

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: tumblr fics & ficlets. [47]
Category: Hemlock Grove, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Hemlock Grove Fusion, F/M, First Meetings, Mild Gore, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fill, Werewolf Allison Argent, non-sexual nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 18:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5637076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The new girl is a werewolf.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Stiles knows why everyone is saying it.  He knows that it's because they're afraid of change, that they're afraid of the dark, that they're all afraid they'll be the next ones found in the forest, torn in half by wild animals.  He knows that none of them actually believe in werewolves, but they don't have any other way of expressing how goddamn scared they are. </p><p>Stiles understands their reasoning.  But he also knows something that they don't.<br/> <br/><i>The new girl is actually a werewolf.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the fabric of your flesh

**Author's Note:**

> written for an anonymous prompt, which asked for Stallison + “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”
> 
> While this is a fusion with the Hemlock Grove universe, no prior knowledge of the show is necessary. unbeta'ed, all mistakes are mine. title taken from the song [Howl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZweDwbJ_Ic) by Florence and the Machine.

_Werewolf. The new girl is a werewolf._

This is practically the first thing Stiles hears on his first day of senior year. A gaggle of girls hanging around in the parking lot are whispering about it behind their hands and as Stiles wades further and further into the school's hallways, he hears it from more and more people. 

_Have you seen her? She’s totally a werewolf._

At first, Stiles just chalks it up to everyone being insane or under the influence of some hallucinogen. Surprisingly, it’s far from the most ridiculous rumor he’s heard in the halls so when some wide eyed freshman asks if he’s seen the new girl yet, Stiles tells him to fuck off and slides into his first period American History class. 

He’s just settled into his seat when the two people sitting in front of him mutter something slightly more interesting than the werewolf rumors.

_I bet she’s the one that killed Laura._

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asks, leaning forward and tapping both of them on the shoulder. They jump like they’ve been electrocuted before they slowly turn and jerk their heads towards the back of the room. Stiles slowly follows their gaze, which is directed at the person sitting at the desk tucked in the back corner of the room. 

Presumably, this is the new girl everyone has been talking about. 

Even though it's a breezy, cool day, the girl is wearing knee high leather boots and a thin cardigan over a floral summer dress. She has long, dark brown hair hanging in waves around her face. After a moment, she lifts her head slightly, enough for Stiles to catch a glimpse of one eye peeking through her curtain of hair. 

For one second, he sees a vivid yellow iris staring at him. But when he blinks again, in the seconds before she lowers her head, he sees nothing but brown.

“I saw the body,” he says, turning back and leaning forward until he’s completely between the two gossip fiends. “Laura Hale was torn apart by wild animals, not some teenage girl. Assholes.” He settles back into his chair for only a moment before sitting back upright, fingers curling hard around the edge of his desk. 

“Oh, and werewolves don’t exist,” he adds.

Stiles doesn’t believe his own words, not by a long shot, but no one else needs to know that. 

&. 

The new girl’s week doesn’t get any easier. 

Stiles watches her from afar, catching glimpses of her in the halls or during the two classes they share. He finds out (mostly from the rumor mill) that her name is Allison Argent and her family lives in one of the mansions near the edge of town that have been abandoned since the recession. She curses to herself in French under her breath and when she does get an answer right in class, she always smiles before ducking back behind her hair.

He also learns that when she gets pissed off, her eyes flash yellow. Thankfully, no one else seems to have noticed that.

But the whispers of _werewolf_ haven't gotten any quieter. 

&. 

That Friday, Stiles visits the site of Laura Hale’s murder. 

She was killed three weeks ago, in a clearing just off one of the hiking trails that crisscross the woods surrounding town. Stiles’ father found her torso, half buried under a pile of dead leaves. 

Stiles, who'd been using an app on his phone to eavesdrop on the police scanner, found the rest of her. 

By the time he gets to the clearing, it’s already dark and there’s some mist swirling around the ground. Some abandoned sprigs of crime scene tape are still stuck to the trees and even though it's against every protocol Stiles has ever read, there are a few cigarette butts squashed into the ground. It's barely rained over the last few weeks, so the dirt in the middle of the clearing is still marked with a dark bloodstain. Stiles kicks aside some leaves, sits down on the cold ground and closes his eyes.

There’s something wrong with Beacon Hills. He’s always known this on some level but it’s palpable now, like a sour taste constantly lingering in the back of his throat. It seems strongest in this clearing; even though Stiles can’t hear anything, he feels like someone (or something) is watching him, making the short hairs on his scalp prick up. 

"C'mon," he whispers, swallowing around the fear in his throat and flexing his knuckles on his knees. "I want to see you."

“Everyone thinks I did it, don’t they?” 

The words come from behind Stiles and his eyes snap open as he scrambles to his feet. He whips around just as Allison silently steps from between two trees. It’s a cool night, but she’s only wearing a thin sweater over a pair of leggings. Her hair is pulled up into a ponytail and for the first time ever, Stiles can see her entire face. 

“Aren’t you cold?” he splutters, gesturing at her. 

“No.” She steps into a patch of moonlight and tilts her head back towards the sky. Her skin is so pale that she looks like she's glowing, like she's soaking up every bit of the moon's glow. “They think I did it.” This time, it isn’t a question and Stiles nods before realizing that her eyes are still closed. 

“Yeah, they do.” 

“Do _you_?” Her eyes snap open and land on him. Her gaze seems to crawl under his skin and sear down to his very bones. 

“Laura Hale was torn apart by wild animals,” he says, swallowing over the lump in his throat as he throws out the same words he’s been repeating for the last week. 

“Not animals,” Allison replies. She crosses the clearing in a few steps before stopping at the bloodstain. “There was just one of them.” She crouches down on the ground and runs her fingers over the stain; Stiles half expects her fingertips to come back red.

“For a day or so, I actually thought it was you,” Allison says, laughing quietly. “I mean, I couldn’t figure out why else you were staring at me.” 

“You thought that _I_ did this?” Stiles replies incredulously. “You seriously think I could tear a person apart?” 

“No. You're just a human. But someone in this town isn't.” She jumps up to her feet and tilts her head back towards the sky again. She inhales deeply before sagging slightly and opening her eyes. “I hate this place. It smells wrong. Even the wind doesn’t feel right.” 

“It feels like something is going to happen,” Stiles says, idly nudging the bloodstain with his toe. “Like there's something waiting just over the horizon, something even worse than the mayor’s daughter being torn in half.” Allison nods and shoves her hands into the pocket of her sweater. 

“You’re not wrong.” After a moment, she looks up at him. There’s no mistaking the yellow glow coming from her eyes as a trick of the light. 

“Why are you so sure that I didn’t do it?” she asks. Truthfully, Stiles doesn’t really know, not in any way that he can verbalize. It's just a feeling, sitting low in his stomach with all the other feelings he has about their fucked up town. So he simply shrugs. 

“If it was you, wouldn’t you have killed me already?” 

Allison smiles slightly and nods again before turning around and disappearing back into the trees. 

Even though she must be stepping on twigs or brushing against leaves, she doesn't make a sound. She just vanishes. 

&. 

One week later, on the day before the full moon, Stiles forgoes his normal spot and takes the seat next to Allison in their first period class. As soon as the teacher turns their back, Stiles yanks a note from his pocket and tosses it onto Allison’s desk. 

_Can I watch?_

He keeps his eyes trained towards the front, gnawing on his lip, all too aware of the weight of her eyes sitting on him. After what seems like an eternity, the note sails back across the gap between them, landing on one of the dozens of doodles filling the margins of his notebook. 

_Yes._

&.

Allison doesn’t come to school the next day, but just as Stiles starts crossing the parking lot to his Jeep, his phone dings with a text from an unknown number. 

_come around six. there’s a trail leading around the house into the woods. follow it to the end._

Stiles crosses the rest of the parking lot in only a few bounds and throws himself into his car. He fires back a response before peeling out, nearly slamming into some asshole with a Porsche. There’s still nearly three hours before he’ll have to leave, but he wants to get ready early. 

He spends most of the time pacing his bedroom and running his hands over his buzzed scalp. Believing in the things that hide in the dark, like werewolves, is one thing. It's a constant feeling of paranoia and fear prickling his spine. Most days, it's easy enough to ignore. But the opportunity to actually watch one of those creatures _transform?_

Well, it makes that prickle of fear feel more like a stab. 

Finally, half an hour before six, he grabs a blanket, a flashlight, and a few books, just in case Allison wants him to stay. His dad is working the night shift so he locks up the house and drives ten over the speed limit all the way across town. 

The Argent mansion sits up on a hill and backs onto the forest. The sprawling structure still looks abandoned. There are two cars parked in the driveway, but every huge window dotting the house's front is dark. It sends a shiver down Stiles’ spine and he averts his eyes, looking instead towards the trail of tire ruts that leads off the driveway and around the back of the house. As he slowly drives towards the wall of trees, he can’t help but take in the view. Beacon Hills is sprawled out in the valley below, a mess of dead-end roads and shuttered businesses. The streetlights are already starting to twinkle on, in a wave that spreads across the entire town. 

Stiles shudders again, this time for no reason he can discern. 

He follows the path into the woods for another five minutes, trying to shake off the feeling of claustrophobia as the trees come closer and closer on each side. By the time the trail finally comes to an end in a large clearing, he’s certain that he has scratch marks on both sides of his Jeep from the sharp fingers of tree branches. 

He pulls to a stop and climbs out. Allison is standing in the middle of the clearing, holding what looks like a compound bow. There’s a leather quiver slung over her back and Stiles stops for a moment to watch as she reaches over her shoulder and pulls out a single arrow. She slots it to the bow and after a few completely silent seconds, where Stiles isn’t even sure if she breathes, the arrow goes flying across the clearing, slamming into a tree with a loud thunk. 

“A werewolf doing archery. Not something I thought I’d ever see,” he says. 

“It helps me focus,” Allison says, turning on her heel. Her feet are bare and she isn’t wearing tights under her short black skirt. She sets both the bow and the quiver on the ground and turns her head from side to side. The crack her neck makes seems to echo across the clearing. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the forest this quiet,” Stiles says, mainly just to fill the silence before it gets awkward and he blurts out something embarrassing or weird. 

The situation is already weird enough without him running his mouth.

“All the animals know what's about to happen,” Allison says. She tacks on a laugh but although she’s smiling, the sound is full of sadness. “They want nothing to do with me.” She moves so that she’s standing in front of Stiles, but a few yards away. Her hands are at her sides and even with the distance between them, Stiles can see her fingers trembling. After a moment, she pulls her sweater over her head and drops it to the ground. 

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Stiles asks, as her hands reach around her back towards the clasp of her black bra. 

“I like this outfit. I don’t want it to get shredded,” Allison says, rolling her eyes. “I don’t care if you look.” With that, she finishes with her bra before wriggling out of her skirt and underwear. Stiles keeps his eyes locked on her face, which is covered in an expression that's a mixture of boredom and sadness. 

Stiles, on the other hand, feels like his face is about to burst into flames. 

“What does it feel like?” he asks. “Does it hurt?” 

“It’s the most painful thing you can imagine.” Stiles opens his mouth to respond but Allison shushes him and closes her eyes. Even though the air is rapidly turning cool, there’s sweat gleaming along her neck and shoulders. For a few moments, she stays almost completely still, shifting back and forth from her heels to her toes. Her fingers tap against her pale thighs and her breathing stirs the wispy pieces of hair floating in front of her face. 

Stiles isn’t sure what he expects to see. He’s read dozens of books about lycanthropy, some of them hundreds of years old, and all of them described werewolves in different ways. In some of them, humans turned completely into wolves on every full moon while in others, they’d simply gained some characteristics; fangs, speed, a little extra hair, while still maintaining control. But none of them had described what actually happened when the people transformed. 

Even if they had, Stiles doesn’t think they could have prepared him for what happens over the next few minutes. 

It starts with a loud crack. Allison’s neck jerks to the side violently, like someone has yanked her hair hard. When it happens again, she groans, just in time for her shoulders to buck forward as well. The next time it happens, it’s powerful enough to send her to the ground on her knees. When she convulses again, she falls forward onto her hands and digs her fingers into the ground. The convulsions continue and the next time she raises her head, there’s blood running down her face from her eyes, which-

Oh. Oh _fuck._

Allison’s groan turns into a throaty scream as her eyes bulge from her head and fall to the ground, replaced by yellow pupils that are unmistakably canine. Stiles claps a hand over his mouth and swallows around the thick taste of bile. Allison screams again and her blood soaked teeth fall to the ground as well, replaced by fangs. Her claws are next to come, pushing through the thin skin of her knuckles and leaving it in tatters. 

By the time the skin covering Allison’s back splits with a sound like damp paper ripping, her screams have mostly turned to howls. 

Her face is the last thing to change. As the last bits of pale skin fall from her back, Allison’s mouth stretches open wide. A snout, tipped with a large black nose, pushes from between her lips, twisting her human face into a mess of wrinkles that looks like a ghoulish Halloween mask. Thankfully, after only a few seconds, her face and hair fall to the ground, joining the rest of the pale shreds littering the clearing like leftover confetti. 

And just like that, there’s a wolf standing in front of Stiles. 

She's entirely covered in thick brown fur that's streaked with black. It's still damp with blood (and other fluids Stiles doesn't really want to think about) and she shakes her entire body, sending the fluid flying through the air. Her shoulders easily reach his waist and she has a huge head and paws that seem too big for her relatively lean body. After a moment, she tilts her head back towards the sky and opens her mouth slightly, wide enough for Stiles to see her gleaming, sharp teeth. 

In that moment, Stiles knows three things. 

1) Allison could have easily torn Laura Hale apart. She could easily tear _him_ apart. 

2) She didn’t. And she won’t.

3) She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

“Allison?” he whispers, dropping into a crouch. “Can you still hear me?” Slowly, he raises his hand and holds it out to her, watching for any sign of recognition. She cocks her head slightly before leaning forward and just barely bumping her nose against his palm. She then turns and starts snuffling through the shreds of skin lying on the grass. After a moment, she snaps up a piece and Stiles twists just in time to empty the contents of his stomach against the wheel of his Jeep. 

“That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he rasps after he's done, wiping off the back of his mouth. 

He looks up just in time to see Allison disappearing into the trees on the far side of the clearing. 

&. 

He finds an old bottle of water under his front seat and he washes out his mouth, spitting into the still bloody grass. He gathers up Allison’s clothes, bow, and quiver, all of which are remarkably unstained, and places them on the passenger seat before climbing into the driver's seat.

After that, there’s nothing left to do but wait. 

Once it gets fully dark, he props his flashlight on the dash and reads until the battery dies. By that point, the full moon is high in the sky. He steps outside to stretch his legs and get some fresh air. A breeze comes through the clearing, bringing with it the sound of a far away howl. 

It makes him shiver. When he climbs into the backseat to grab some shut eye, he makes sure that the doors are locked and he keeps his baseball bat within arm's reach. 

Just in case.

&.

When he wakes up, he has a sore neck and there’s blood splashed against his windows. 

He grabs his bat before he unlocks the door and slides from the vehicle. It’s early morning, based on the dew still covering the grass, and Allison is lying on the ground, legs pulled towards her chest. Her skin is still covered in a fine sheen of blood and the ground around her is littered with chunks of fur. When Stiles takes another step forward, his sneaker crunches over what turns out to be a canine tooth. 

“Allison? Are you okay?” he asks, slowly lowering the bat. 

“Cold,” she mutters, voice still more of a growl than anything. Stiles drops the bat to the ground before jogging over to the Jeep and grabbing one of the blankets he has stashed in the back. By the time he returns, Allison has pulled herself into a sitting position and pushed some of her sticky hair away from her eyes. Stiles drapes the blanket over her shoulder before dropping to the ground as well, trying to ignore how quickly his pants get soaked from the blood and dew. 

“There’s so many things I want to ask,” he says. “How did this happen to you, when did it start, do your parents-”

“Not now,” Allison mumbles. Her head drops onto Stiles’ shoulder, heavy as lead. “In about half an hour, I’m going to need coffee and some meat. But I need to sleep first.” She doesn’t show any sign of wanting to move, so Stiles tucks the blanket tighter around her shoulders and tries to stay still, even after his shoulder falls asleep. 

“I wish you could see yourself the way I saw you,” he murmurs, drumming his fingers off his knees. After a moment, he realizes how bizarre the statement sounds so he continues, hoping Allison can still hear him. “Shit, that was probably creepy, wasn't it?”

“It’s fine,” Allison murmurs, shifting against his side. “Now shut up. I need to sleep.” 

There’s still something wrong in Beacon Hills, something lurking underneath the surface of the ground and in the depths of the trees, something that has the power to tear a human being in half. Even though there's no one else within sight, Stiles can still feel eyes on the back of his neck. He's certain that there’s more blood in the town’s future and that things are only going to get worse before they get better ( _if_ they ever get better). 

But, he thinks as he turns and rests his cheek against Allison's damp hair, for half an hour, he can manage to put all that out of his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
